Merry Christmas, Dustin Brown.

The IRS wants to send you a check, just in time for the holidays.

“They owe me money, huh?” the Lawrence resident said late last week, informed that the federal tax collector still has his refund for 2005 income taxes. “Perfect!”

Turns out Brown isn’t alone.

The IRS is holding onto $5,205 in undelivered refunds for Douglas County residents, part of the $377,866 stuck in limbo statewide and $92.2 million throughout the country.

Throw in all the unclaimed property wallowing in storage with the Kansas State Treasurer – more than $189 million in all – and there’s plenty of opportunity for folks to pick up a little extra holiday cash during this, the busiest shopping stretch of the year.

All you need to do is ask.

“It really is incredible how much money gets lost, and how much property has been forgotten – intentionally or unintentionally,” said Jenalea Linn, spokeswoman for the treasurer’s office, which handles unclaimed property for the state. “If you leave your money with the state treasurer’s office, you’re not going to earn any interest on it. There’s no point in leaving it with us.

“You need to take that money back and use it to buy Christmas presents.”

What follows is a rundown on some of the money – potentially your money – out there in regulatory purgatory, and how you can help it reach salvation in your bank account.

Tax refunds

This year the Internal Revenue Service mailed out 43.5 million refund checks. About one in 500 was deemed undeliverable by the U.S. Postal Service and sent back to the IRS for resolution.

Now Uncle Sam wants to give the money back to the taxpayers who filed their returns, were issued checks and – for some reason, whether it’s attributable to a marriage, divorce or a simple move across town or out of state – didn’t get a chance to bank the dough.

“It’s their money,” said Michael Devine, an IRS spokesman in St. Louis, whose responsibilities include trying to get the word out about undelivered checks. “They just have to claim it.”

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The IRS says there are 535 refund checks waiting to go to their rightful owners in Kansas, for an average amount of $706. The 22 checks awaiting delivery for folks in Douglas County – 21 are listed with Lawrence addresses, plus one in Eudora – have an average refund of $206.

Brown, who lives in Virginia Beach for most of the year, figures he’s owed about $25. When informed that the IRS still had his check, he admitted being surprised that he hadn’t gotten his refund yet.

Then again, he was amazed to be owed money at all. Usually he’s paying.

“I guess it just slipped my mind,” said Brown, who – ironically enough – owns and operates Liberty Tax Service in Lawrence, an office that prepared tax returns for nearly 700 clients this year. “It’s kind of funny.”

Brown said he soon would be logging onto the IRS’ Web site – www.irs.gov – and clicking on the “Where’s My Refund?” link to start the bureaucratic machine rolling toward getting his money back. He’s back in Lawrence these days, preparing his office for another tax year after being recognized as having the best-performing new franchise in the Midwest region of the company’s nationwide network.

He’ll expect a check within a week or two, the time frame he’s seen for some of his own clients and confirmed, in general, by Devine.

“I’ll put it toward Christmas presents or something,” Brown said.

The Kansas Department of Revenue also has plenty of unclaimed refunds to tend to: about 2,300 remaining this year, said Chad Sullivan, the department’s income tax manager. People can check a Web site – www.kdor.org/refundstatus – or call an automated line at (800) 894-0318 to check a refund’s status.

The department hangs onto the money for a year once a check is issued, then turns it back to the state treasurer. So far this year more than 10,000 people have been reunited with their initially undelivered state income tax checks, but any funds left in limbo after a year are poured back into the state treasury.

Once a taxpayer is properly located, Sullivan said, the person’s unused check gets sealed into a new envelope and dropped into the mail that day.

“What’s amazing is they don’t call us,” Sullivan said. “If I had some money coming to me and I didn’t get it back, I’d be calling.”

Unclaimed property

Even more money and property are waiting in Topeka for return to their rightful owners.

The Kansas State Treasurer’s Office reports having $189 million of outstanding financial assets in 826,000 properties, such as inactive accounts, uncashed checks, insurance proceeds and other items. Of that total:

¢ 18,974 properties are being held for people in Lawrence, with the items and assets worth a combined $2.5 million.

¢ When all of Douglas County is included, the total rises to 20,820 properties, worth $2.71 million.

“That includes savings accounts, checking accounts, utility deposits, refund checks from Sears or any store you’ve done business with, royalty checks from oil reserves or mineral rights your family has owned or might have had an interest in …” Linn said, rattling off a list that could go on for another page or two, when contents of unattended safe deposit boxes are included.

Such boxes include silver bars, antique toys, family Bibles and horseback dollars – “they’re worth a lot of money,” Linn said – that are among the thousands of items waiting to be claimed.

The department’s Unclaimed Property Division has a Web site set up to handle queries. Just go to www.kansascash.com and start clicking around.

“You just never know if you have unclaimed property,” Linn said. “We receive ‘new’ money each year, so even if a person has found money previously, they need to check again, again and again.”

The treasurer’s office returned $1.2 million in previously unclaimed property during September alone.

Wanda Knight, who has been working in the Douglas County Treasurer’s Office for 22 years, knows how the process works.

“It’s easy,” Knight said. “My husband actually found his father’s name on there one time, on a closed checking account. : After a few years, people tend to forget if they have anything. It’s stuff for people that is long forgotten.”